This will likely be an ever-changing and updating topic. Fans of international baseball could be happy about Barack Obama as the U.S. President, especially since he is a baseball fan (even though he’s a White Sox supporter).
The website for Major League Baseball speculated Obama could help persuade members of the International Olympic Committee to bring baseball back into the Olympic program for the 2016 Summer Games.
“Bringing the Olympic Games to Chicago will be a capstone of the success we’ve had in the past couple of decades in transforming Chicago into not just a great American city but into a great global city,” said Obama, a U.S. Senator from Illinois and a former Illinois State Senator.
The vote is scheduled on October 2, 2009 in Copenhagen, just days after the end of the 2009 World Baseball Championships in Europe. And Jimmie Lee Solomon, Major League Baseball’s executive vice president of baseball operations, thinks a change could come with Obama’s interest in baseball – he is a declared Chicago White Sox fan.
“I’d like to believe that our bid to get back in the Olympics would be enhanced by having Barack Obama in office. I’m not sure exactly how that would work, but we want to be back in the Olympics. We’ve made no bones about that,” Solomon told mlb.com.
Chicago is one of four cities – and the only one in North America – bidding for the 2016 Olympics. Japanese capital Tokyo is also going for the Games and is also a big baseball country.
“I think Sen. Obama’s election is an event of profound significance to a lot of people around the world,” Don Fehr, the executive director of the Major League Baseball Players’ Association, told The Associated Press. “I would be surprised if it was not received that way in Olympic circles, also.”
Baseball along with softball was taken off the Olympic program for the 2012 Olympics in 2005.